country in Southern Africa. A scenic land of tall mountains and narrow valleys, Lesotho owes a long history of political autonomy to the mountains that surround it and protect it from encroachment. Since the Neolithic Period, the mountain kingdom was the domain of Khoisan -speaking hunter-gatherers. In the 19th century the Sotho, led by Moshoeshoe I, took control of the region. It remained independent until it became a British protectorate, one of three British High Commission Territories (the others being Bechuanaland [now Botswana] and Swaziland). Completely encircled by the Republic of South Africa but separated from it by forbidding mountain ranges, Lesotho has endured decades of turbulent politics, periodic economic crises, and grinding poverty since gaining its independence from Great Britain in 1966. Though culturally conservative in the main, the people of the country welcomed the modernization programs begun in the 1990s, which have brought new wealth to the country but at...